Have you noticed the numbers? If you walk in to Plainview’s United or Amigos grocery stores and start shopping, you will see there are more numbers than just the price of an item on the shelf tags.

The numbers, between 1 and 100 on two interlocking blue hexagons, show how nutritious that bag of chips or jar of peanut butter you just picked up are.

On Tuesday, the Lubbock-based supermarket chain announced they were extending their use of the NuVal system, started as a pilot program at their stores in 2010.

United was the first chain in Texas to adopt the scoring system, created by the makers of their store brand items and a hospital connected to Yale University in 2008.

NuVal, meaning Nutritional Value, gives shoppers another way to determine what foods are healthy. “The NuVal system is one of the ways our stores make it easy for our guests to build a better basket,” Robin Hawkins, United’s director of health and wellness, said in a press release announcing the continued partnership. “We are extremely proud to have been the first retailer in Texas to implement the NuVal system and are excited about the opportunity it provides the one million guests who shop our stores every week.”

The release says with the contract extension United customers can “continue to count on the unique, easy-to-use program they have depended on to find the most nutritious foods on its shelves.”

United operates three separate businesses in Plainview: The United Supermarket on Olton Road, the Amigos United grocery store at 24th and Columbia and a United Express gas station in the Amigos parking lot.